CPL One managing director Mike Sewell reflects on the timely message behind CPL One’s AI-inspired seasonal film.
The two main themes of our 2025 seasonal film are pretty straightforward.
One is to wish everyone we work with a happy festive season and to thank them for all their support and collaboration over the past 12 months.
The second is to point out that, in our world where AI tools can play an increasingly influential role, “some things are made better together”.
By that, we mean talented humans working together in a creative, productive environment will normally produce an end result that outshines the outcomes from any AI tool.
At CPL One, we are proud to have spent 2025 creating excellent work that has helped achieve our business purpose: “To help people belong”.
Here are just a few examples:
- Our journalists, film and podcast crews have been out and about meeting and interviewing people face to face, and then crafting exclusive stories as a result
- Our graphic designers and digital developers have shown flair and imagination to create lively and visually engaging content across multiple platforms
- Our sales teams have attended events, built customer relationships and shown a consultative selling approach that no bots can match
- Our project managers have demonstrated their agility and organisational skills to keep various projects on track.
AI tools can help with some of the above, but in a creative environment they can’t produce the all-round, emotionally engaging results that humans can.
However, let none of this make you think that we don’t believe in the power of AI to benefit our clients, our audiences and our people.
- We are using AI tools that come with our secure and private Google Workspace licence to speed up many of our processes. For example, it took half an hour to collate and create a first version of a 2026 publishing production schedule for the whole of CPL One; a process that would have taken at least two days in the past
- It is helping simplify some of our journalists’ research when they need to access multiple sources of information
- It is providing a means to maximise our exclusive content across a range of other formats, such as this two-minute AI audio overview of a longer written feature
There are countless other examples where our teams are being curious and imaginative about how to use AI in a way that benefits everyone – all while ensuring we take into account relevant ethical and security considerations.
Our teams at CPL One are increasingly seeing AI tools as an opportunity that frees up time for them to focus on doing better, more creative and more interesting work. It was instructive to hear speakers at last month’s major AI forum for media and events companies emphasise how this is also happening in their newsrooms, design studios and sales offices.
That’s what we’re looking to highlight in our Christmas film. It starts with me trying and failing to use an AI prompt to come up with a decent result. I then say: “On this occasion, maybe we shouldn’t be using AI.”
I use the words “on this occasion” because I believe that in lots of other cases we at CPL One should embrace the good things AI can offer (while rejecting the derivative dross that often comes with it).
But at all times we should focus on the film’s main theme – that “some things are made better together”.
We will also adapt our current CPL One mantra concerning AI. This, borrowed from the New York Times, is “human first, human last” – ie you need humans to prompt AI in the right way, and you need humans to check what AI delivers.
During 2026, we will take this mantra one step further: “Not just human first, human last, but human always in charge.” (Thanks to Lucio Mesquita, from the Innovation Media Consulting Group, for this nice turn of phrase at November’s PPA Independent Publisher Conference.)
With this “human always in charge” approach, I am confident we will be able to maximise the best of AI and continue to offer our clients a relevant, engaging service that no bot can match.
Have a great festive season and here’s to a happy new year!
